AV Club chats with Reznor about the now-completed retirement of Nine Inch Nails, a miniature retrospective of twenty years spent giving atheist nihilism and social paranoia a voice. A NIN postmortem.

This is the end of an era for me. Spacekat gave me a copy of The Downward Spiral to play Summer ping pong to in the garage back in ’94. My initial humouring, “ummm, that’s great” eventually blossomed into a full-blown theological crisis that fundamentally altered my way-of-being-and-knowing/thinking. Is there a word for that? My dharma?

Anyway, I was watching for it and NINJA didn’t come to the West! Oh well, I’m okay with life not being fair these days.

Reznor says he ended the band because it was easy for him to succeed at, and at this point in his career he’s chasing failure. I love it. He’s always a step ahead, showing me the way.